Do you have to play sports to understand them?
It’s a question at the center of too many bad internet debates. “I bet you don’t even play ball.”
Does that matter?
Where is the line? Is the worth of an opinion weighed by the level of basketball? A D1 rec league player is allowed to comment on the NBA, but D3 is out?
It’s an ad hominem. The opinion is independent of the opinion holder. Still, we plebeians ought to remember that we don’t always know. There’s something strange, optically, about a high school
social studies teacher publicly declaring that an NBA head coach ought to have one more season to prove his worth. Yet, here goes:
Houston Rockets head coach Ime Udoka should only have one more season to prove his worth.
Rockets’ Ime Udoka has been a strong coach
It won’t be an unpopular opinion in these quarters!
You guys really, really don’t like Udoka. Opinions vary, yes, but the consensus leans heavily in one direction.
Perhaps my eyes don’t work so well. I’m not as low on Udoka. I think he’s, at a minimum, a top-15 coach in the NBA:
But creeping into the upper half isn’t a sound approach to job security as an NBA head coach.
We should all agree that Udoka is a strong defensive coach. There’s been some dispute over the extent to which he relies on lineups to bolster that defense. It’s been argued that if he can’t scheme around Alperen Sengun and Reed Sheppard, his defensive success is less about acumen and more about putting good defenders on the floor.
It could also be argued that God his -or-her self could not design a scheme that protects Sengun and Sheppard at the same time. Udoka has proven his ability to maximize Sengun on that end of the floor. His inability to draw blood from a stone should not discredit his ability to smelt iron from one.
It’s Udoka’s offensive know-how that’s rightly questioned; however, the numbers do not support that line of questioning. In Udoka’s two seasons at the helm, the Rockets ranked twelfth (114.9) and eighth (117.5) in Offensive Rating.
So, on paper, the question becomes “What are we even talking about?” Udoka has hovered around a top-ten offense in two consecutive seasons, and a top-five defense in each (sixth in 2024-25, fifth in 2025-26). If that’s enough to get his seat hot, almost every coach in the NBA should be developing back problems from constantly standing.
So what are we doing?
Rockets’ Ime Udoka’s seat should be getting hot
For Udoka critics, it’s less about the offensive results and more about the process.
Last year’s 36.3% Offensive Rebounding % was the highest in the NBA by a country mile. The gap between Houston and the second-place Portland Trail Blazers (33.2%) was roughly the same as the gap between the Blazers and the eighth-ranked Charlotte Hornets (30.8%).
In 2024-25, the recipe was rebounding and turnover repression – in the vernacular of the youth, “possession maxxing”. Last year, Fred VanVleet was out, but Kevin Durant replaced Jalen Green offensively, so the recipe was tweaked – more turnovers, but better shots, and the same offensive rebounding dominance.
In theory, 2026-27 could combine the best of both worlds. The Rockets will be formidable:
But if they don’t escape the first round, it’s a moot point.
That’s the real reality of Udoka’s situation. If a coach is eliminated in the first round in three straight seasons, the “why” is less relevant than the “what” – you fire them.
Those process-focused critics will argue that Udoka’s approach is not playoff-viable. The data is on their side, although the causation is unclear. It could easily be argued that other variables have hurt the Rockets’ playoff success.
In 2024-25, it made sense for an aging dynasty to beat an unproven upstart. The Rockets ran into the Warriors, triggering PTSD for every Rockets fan who was not born roughly yesterday.
Last year was both simpler and more complicated. Durant played one game. That’s worth noting, but injuries to Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves mitigate that excuse. Getting beat by Luke Kennard and Marcus Smart was a bad look. At least Smart is a Rocket now:
So prepare yourself for his shooting regression.
What if everyone had been healthy? Could Houston have exploited Reaves defensively to such an extent as to offset his offensive ability? Would Doncic have carried the day, or would Durant overcome him down the stretch? We don’t know; we can’t know; we won’t know.
Here’s what we do know: Udoka has one more season. It doesn’t matter where you land on him. It doesn’t matter if his offensive approach has playoff viability.
Frankly, his iso-heavy approach, paired with an insistence that his team outworks the other team, feels more playoff-friendly than some kind of elaborate system anyway, but if it doesn’t yield playoff results, it doesn’t matter. When you lose in the first round for three consecutive seasons, you lose your job:
It doesn’t matter what any of us think.
